wgriffith74

I work for an auction and have just came into the IT position. MGR wants to increase # of camera's and correct problems of unwatchable ones. Current system was custom built by previous IT Admin. My first question is Antenna Range. Previous system is running some wireless IP Cam's (TrendNet). There is a 2.4ghz 15 dBi Yagi Antenna (connected to wired router, which connects to DVR) pointed at them (4 Camera's) but it is only able to pickup 1 or 2 of the cam's. Cam's are mount on light pole (inside camera box), with extension cable coming from cam attached to rubber duck antenna's mounted on pole. When it comes to antenna's I have been reading like crazy and unfortunately it is all starting to get all mixed up in my brain. Now if I am not mistaken a rubber duck antenna only emits a 2.2-2.8 dBi. Should I increase the antenna size to beef up the dBi on the Camera to be able to transmit back to the Yagi Antenna? The distance from Yagi to Rubber Duck Antenna's is about 250-300ft. I have thought of wiring the cams to a switch attached to an Access Point and then pointing a Directional Flat Panel towards the Yagi and to further increase my Camera coverage in future installs. Thanks for any thoughts or advice.

Thank you for the response. My LOS in a straight line is unblocked.... however from the Yagi to the rubber duck there is another light pole that would affect the Horizontal signal. Vertically, depending on how big the Fresnel Zone is should be no issues. Antenna's are approx same height (+/- 1') about 20' from the ground. If I was to replace the Omni-directional antenna's with a 1 bi-directional antenna, how could I link all of the Camera's antenna into one? Cloud Router? Access Point? Or is there a simpler way? Would the other light pole affect a bi-directional antenna as well? Thanks Wayne